Identity in a New Era

Steam of consciousness is not the easiest thing to read, I admit, and I apologize for this in advance. But today I had allergies act up and my nose has been running like a faucet so sleep is sort of out of the question until the combination of my body and some OTC meds clear me up.

Confession: I think non-stop. Stress makes me think deeper and harder, as well. Today I read a story on the BBC online about sensory deprivation, and one former hostage said when you're alone you have to depend on you having "enough in your head" to get by, or something. I guess it's like that. The mind is the ultimate get-away. And, unlike TV, movies, or video-games, as thought-provoking and interactive as those may be, the mind has a way of urging you to churn out its contents into creative forces. Like this blog entry, for example.

Virtual Worlds as the Ultimate Creative Outlet

That's ultimately why virtual worlds that you can create in are so cool, because that mind-space pours out into a shared setting in a way that can be almost literal. Sure, things like music and writing and speech and other creative outlets wind up communicating that mind-space, but virtual worlds are so inherently surreal that they are like sharing dreams.

And there's no doubt people crave this outlet. That's why MySpace and Facebook and YouTube are so wildly successful with content creators. It's that same creative juice, only rather than beinig a simple hobby like building model airplanes or arranging a garden, these are things people can do as creative outlets that they can share with people all over the world. They are sharing this whole part of themselves that used to be a privilege only the artistic elite had.

At the same time, peoples' identities are being plastered all over the web, archived, and searched. It's creepy, and I've been reading Eric Rice and he's right on when he elaborates on a new type of data farming in the future. And I had this little conundrum: I went to a New Years Eve party, took some pictures, downloaded them from my camera to my computer, and then went to upload to flickr.

I paused.

Why didn't I just upload them to flickr? I had mentioned at the party that I'd be doing that, no one expressed a problem with it. I've even got a Firefox add-on that makes uploading to flickr a matter of drag and drop simple. But instead, there I have been sitting, now 3 weeks later, still not uploaded.

Identity

Since I co-founded SLCC back in 2005, I made a conscious choice in my life that I'd have to accept that I was somewhat of a public figure (though a minor one) and that information about me would be available. I came to terms with that, and don't regret the decision. However, as I google people - friends from the past, etc - I find there's a huge divide of people who are plugged in and people who aren't. It's like me showing my mom Second Life live for the first time on Sunday. What's with that? I've told her about it plenty of times, she has a laptop that can run it, though she really isn't super interested in being there herself.

So?

So looking back, I've been open about my identity to a point, consciously, letting my "business identity" of sorts shine through, and always being fairly down to earth when I meet people personally. (Whether real life or in-world.) And this usually works very well, and I can filter who knows a lot about me the way anyone would - by whom I know better, who has earned my trust and friendship, etc. Add to this situation an ex whom I dated for several years who wasn't all that terribly interested in my job. I had a fairly established personal life and business one.

The Two Identities of Workers in Corporate America

And having these two lives is very Americana - people "leave their jobs" at the office, so to speak, and come home. Meanwhile in corporate America we're taught by employers to not discuss your private life, as it might be inappropriate or "offensive". This is reminiscent of the Army's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, when you think about it.

Yet, inevitably, our personal and business lives both influence who we are very much, and it's impossible to change one's behavior completely for one or the other. Our family lives affect our attitude at work; our stresses at work affect our family life. (and so many other ways) So these two identities are separate, yet intrinsically tied together.

Identities Bleeding Together

And then there are the things that plug each of the two identities together in a very direct way. In my case, some examples:
1. As a partner in my business, Involve, I keep in contact with my partners on a personal level because starting any business is difficult. We need morale up, we need to stay motivated and focused, and so it's natural that we look out for one another more than just coworkers.
2. My cousin just started in Second Life recently. I used to rarely talk with him, but I find him entering this virtual world and really immersing himself.
3. I went to my grandmother's 90th birthday party a couple weekends ago. There, my business kept being brought up by family members in conversation. Talking about what I do seemed inescapable.
4. My lead programmer is a friend of mine from college. He's a brilliant programmer, likely better than myself, and was very into virtual worlds, and was looking for a new direction. The choice was a no-brainer. I find though having to be his boss a challenge, and I find myself flagging times specifically as business or social. Yet, they inevitably intermix.

The list goes on. Do I really have a separate identity? No. It is like when a person has more than one avatar with different personalities - that is still the same person at the keyboard controlling them, but it's two ways that they express things. Only if it's just avatars, then perhaps it's for fun. When it's real life, I find it more and more compelling to be myself, and thus always be sure I'm grounded in who I am and how I respond to people.

The trick I think is that as a culture, we are becoming more open, and this identity line is becoming more transparent. And we're in for a hell of a journey. Already there's plenty of evidence of employers googling potential candidates and screening people based on search results. And I thought Gattaca was scary! And yet I use it to verify facts, as a research tool for people. If a contractor comes to me looking for work, of course I will look for evidence to show that they indeed worked for their other employers. As I search for a new roommate, of course I'm going to Google them, and see if their claims to be "easy going and quiet" are backed up by their MySpace profile.

3 Great Questions for the 21st Century:

There are a few great questions of the 21st century, and they all revolve around identity.
The first: Will technology control us or we control technology? (the theme of the Matrix series of movies)
The second is: Will openness of personal data and identity make us more tolerant or paranoid?
The third is: Once we are sharing so much of our thoughts, ideas, and lives, will the notion of contribution to progress be so intermixed as to make intellectual property a principle based on sharing rather than the individual?

Identity is being redefined in this century. We're watching it happen. I guess the easiest thing to do is to look at people I admire for guidance. The historical figures I admire ... all human. I can think about scientific and spiritual giants like Einstein or Richard Feynman or Jesus or Martin Luther King Jr. (I knew I'd figure out a way to work him into this post, on his holiday.), or perhaps the Dalai Lama, or John Lennon, or Ben Franklin or, for that matter, any historical figure that is admired, and they share one thing in common: We know about who they are. Their lives are shared with us and we know them as human beings, not just as empty symbols of ideology.

And for a more practical basis, I look at my contemporaries that I admire, and I again see men and women who reveal themselves rather than hide. It's that spark of childhood glee that makes me appreciate Philip Rosedale when he talks about how virtual worlds are a big Lego kit more than just a business owner who started Second Life. I've been reading Cory Ondrejka's blog as well, (and have heard him speak several times, and then there was this kareoke bar ...) and there's something extremely humanizing when someone with such a daunting educational and career portfolio as he can just be self-deprecating about his own code ("LSL as a failed language") and just down to earth about what he thinks, rather than what a company thinks.

The people I generally don't get along with are the people who are always hiding things, or putting on a show but distracting me from what they really think. Additionally, I've encouraged Linden Lab as a whole to be more open about their identities, in a way Torley pioneered. Heck, that's the ironic secret to Torley's success, I think - he's always just been himself. (And being positive about everything helps a lot, I suppose. *grin*)

I think my choice is clear. My identities should flow a bit more together. Call this blog post a start?

I supppose that - and this is an excuse - I've always felt that there's so many talented, wonderful people in the virtual worlds industry, that there's a nagging feeling like I wouldn't measure up somehow. And, that's clearly not true; I'll say this in the most humble way I can think of right now at 3:30am - I have some pretty clearly measurable success by anyone's standards.

Maybe that's my 20-something identity crisis. Geez, I'm too young to be thinking these things! But that's me, always thinking. No, that's not really correct. I suppose my generation is the generation about openness, and so this is fairly appropriate. Tomorrow I'll get back to writing code, but perhaps you have your thoughts, reader, that you could share in the comments below?